Bitchlab Serves Up Caitlin Flanagan

Bitchlab serves up Caitlin Flanagan. Bitchlab also goes on a lengthy discussion about Flanagan's Time op-ed. The piece is less about stay-at-home mothers than Flanagan's favorite subject. Herself.

But despite all that, there is apparently no room for me in the Democratic Party. In fact, I have spent much of the past week on a forced march to the G.O.P. And the bayonet at my back isn't in the hands of the Republicans; the Democrats are the bullyboys. Such lions of the left as Barbara Ehrenreich, the writers at Salon and much of the Upper West Side of Manhattan have made it abundantly clear to me that I ought to start packing my bags. I'm not leaving, but sometimes I wonder: When did I sign up to be the beaten wife of the Democratic Party?

Miss B responds.

Bayonet? You are being forced by the Democrats? Sweetums — how could I call someone anything else with that little halo effect thing you’re doing with the hair (besides, you’re a traditional girl!) — the spineless Democrats are forcing you to do something? And they are forcing you how, exactly? With a bayonet. Lawdy, they are old-fashioned in their choice of weapons, aren’t they?

Flanagan fails to understand is that her constant dissing of feminists (see here and here.)

I feel the earliest kind of feminism demanded rights for all women. But I associate feminism now with women who are like me: white, educated, middle to upper-middle class, and who feel they are still getting the shaft. But, for heaven's sake, if anything, we have the privileges now; we are now the men of the '50s.

I'm sure many single-mothers would disagree. Flanagan has a hard time understanding that not all women have a nanny, maid and high paying job at the New Yorker. This is what drives feminists crazy. Not that Flanagan wishes to spend more time raising her kids. She is perfectly entitled to that choice. Most women don't have the same option.